Cold
by Roadstergal
Summary: A trio of ficlets in an AU spanning from Season VI to Season VII. Mild slash.
1. Chapter 1

_Two-toned blue and black leather bolero jacket. Silk button-down shirts with ruffled collars. Gold lamè scarf with embroidered edges._  
Rimmer had speculated out loud more than once that the Cat must keep himself entertained with sexual fantasies at the helm in the long hours of nothing-happening. He's more or less right.  
_Faux tiger fur stole. Italian leather ankle-high boots. Spotless spats. 24-caret-gold filgr..._  
The Cat stopped in mid-mental litany and frowned. He hit the side of the console, and the frown deepened. "Blinky light alert!" he shouted over his shoulder. "We have a blinky light on the console!  
Kryten stepped forward to look over his shoulder. "Oh my. This is a warning light for the HVAC system."  
"The what?"  
"The thing that lets you breathe."  
"That's bad, isn't it?"  
"Indeed, sir."

Kryten stopped on his way down to the central air unit to pick up Lister. Lister was initially annoyed at the interruption, as he had found a brilliant angle from which to urinate on Rimmer from three decks up, once he emerged to take his shift, but Kryten eventually managed to persuade him that breathing is more important than irritating Rimmer. Together, they went to the drive room, where the oxy-generation unit, clearly marked, sat in a niche in a huge, greasy, dusty bank of unlabeled machinery, twice the height of Lister, with odd blunt protrusions that stuck out like tumors.  
Kryten hit a few buttons on the O-G unit, and it flashed a soothing green light back. "Ah, good. The O-G unit is fully functional. You and Cat will not suffocate."  
"Cheers, man," Lister replied nervously. He flashed the torch he was holding up onto the dingy, greasy monstrosity behind the O-G unit. "What's this?"  
"That is the filtration system and the heating system. As space is a heat sink, we have no need of cooling, of course." Kryten touched one of the bulbous protrusions, and a chunk of the surface slid back to reveal a gritty control panel. He touched a few buttons, and a worryingly red light glowed desultorily. "Oh dear. The heating unit is failing."  
"What's that mean?"  
"Well, eventually this ship will cool down to about 2 degrees Kelvin, just above absolute zero."  
"That's cold, innit?"  
"Indeed."

The crew sat around the table in the midsection as Kryten finished explaining the situation. "It will not be a catastrophic failure. The temperature of the ship will gradually decrease as the unit fails. The auto-repair systems should be able to repair the unit, but they will not be able to work on it while it is running. I believe the best course of action will be to find a suitable planet on which to land and shut down the unit. If we shut it down in open space, the temperature of the ship will drop to effectively zero in minutes."  
Rimmer sat back and folded his hands. "Well, we can just wait for curry night. Lister's flatulence is an untapped natural resource."  
"In order to adequately heat the ship, Mr. Rimmer, Lister would have to break wind nonstop for four hours a day."  
"He'll just have to cut down."  
Lister rolled his eyes. "Look, we found a planet on long, long, long range scan that looks reasonable. Point eight gee and a breathable atmosphere. I say we turn the heat down to minimum to save the unit, and head for it." He punched a few keys, and a rust-brown sphere appeared on the monitor next to the cockpit door.  
"Brown?" Cat looked down as his mauve smoking jacket. "I'm going to have to go change. Aaaaaw!"  
"Make sure it's warm!" Lister shouted after him.  
Two weeks later, they were just about halfway to the planet. The heating unit was still chugging along, keeping the ship at a nominal 5 degrees C; it had started to make some rather worrisome whirry noises with an occasional clonk, however, and although Kryten assured him that it would last until planetfall, Lister was worried. He huddled in his parka and mittens and paced nervously around the midsection. Cat was at the helm, resplendent in his white fur jacket and hat, and Kryten took no notice of temperature; Lister, however, was cold, and didn't like it one bit. He finally headed back to his quarters, hoping to snooze a little under a nice thick sleeping bag. He was surprised to see Rimmer there on the other bunk, with an expression on his face that would be better suited to icicles hanging from his nose.  
"Hey, man," Lister said as he jumped into the cold bed, "what's with the mope?"  
"It's cold, you goit."  
Lister wiggled around until his body heat warmed up the comforter, and turned to Rimmer with a happy sigh. "What, cold? I didn't think you got cold."  
"Not like I did when I was alive. I don't shiver. But I can tell it's cold, and it's not comfortable."  
"Well, get into something warmer, man."  
Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Holo-clothes aren't any more real than I am. And I don't generate any heat to keep in, anyway."  
"I've seen you go out walking in deep space, though, man!" Lister was warming up to the argument - any warming at all was welcome. He rubbed the snot that was starting to seep out of his nose off on the corner of the bedspread. Rimmer flared his nostrils in disgust. "Deep space has no air to _be_ cold."  
"Oh, so your light bee senses temperature when there's air around to have a temperature. I get it. Lemme see..." Lister leaned out of the bunk and made a grab for the light bee, but only swept a hand through Rimmer's right-hand side as the neurotic hologram leapt back. "Keep your grotty putrescent curry-saturated fingers OUT of me! You don't just go sticking your hands into other blokes like that!" He looked back down his nose at Lister, now standing in front of him with his arms crossed. "Well, maybe you do." He turned to leave.  
"Look, I'm sorry, man, I just want to help out." Well, that was not totally honest, perhaps. He was curious. He had only ever interacted with the hologram when he ran his hand through it back on Red Dwarf - oh, and when he had swallowed the light bee. But he had been irritated and turned it off, so it was rather a lot like swallowing a penny. Except that it went down more easily.  
Lister walked up behind Rimmer and slipped his arms under Rimmer's arms and over his chest. He had to pay close attention to keep his hands on the outside of the hologram - and he was surprised to find that the boundary of Rimmer's body had a presence of its own. A subtle one, easily disregarded, but rather like the someone-walked-over-my-grave sensation when you take out the icy chill and foreboding.  
Then he froze, realizing that if this were a woman, he would be spooning her and nuzzling her neck.  
"Let. Go. Of. Me." Rimmer said through clenched teeth. And Lister did.

Lister dearly hoped that the planet would have a nice, suitably boring, and above all, warm location. With only three days until planetfall, the heating system was rapidly failing; the temperature was now a less-than-tepid -20 degrees C, and he and Cat were feeling it. They took comforters with them, now, wrapped into absurd ovoid bundles as they tripped and bounced and rolled their way about their duties. Kryten was infuriatingly optimistic, and Lister had responded to his latest variation on "Cold enough for you, sir?" with a suggestion that he engage in sexual practices that would be highly challenging for a limber human male, let alone a stiff-jointed android with a trademark where his jolly bits ought to be. Kryten had gone down to the service decks in a huff, and was now attempting to chip the laundry out of the solid cube that the sudsy water had turned into.  
Rimmer had been uncharacteristically quiet; mindful of their earlier conversation, Lister had, like a good friend, attempted to draw him out by means of particularly offensive insults and his most disgusting anecdotes. But this had not worked; Rimmer's responses were uninspired mutterings of "git" and "gimboid." And while Lister knew that it was a straight-bloke hangup to react to an unexpected intimacy by holding the object of it at arm's length through meanness, he didn't care enough to buck the trend. And neither, he was fairly sure, did Rimmer. He pulled the edges of the throw up around his shoulders (it was from the women's quarters - puce with fuchsia spots - but it was warm) and stared fixedly at the brown sphere that was growing larger by the hour.  
Later that evening, he lay under two scratchy blankets and a thick sleeping bag, slowly warming to the point where sleep would be possible. Cat, true to his kind, was out immediately. Lister was finally managing to drift off when he noticed that someone else was in the room.  
Rimmer sat on the edge of the bed. The bed did not settle under him.  
"I'm cold."  
He was not shivering and his teeth weren't chattering. He was just cold.  
Lister propped himself up on one elbow and looked hard at the figure he could barely see in the dim light. He couldn't hear that edge of suppressed glee in the hologram's irritatingly nasal voice that he could never quite hide when he had a jape in the works.  
"So?"  
Rimmer didn't speak, and his back wasn't contributing anything extra to the conversation. Lister sighed after a few minutes, and shifted back in his bunk. "Well, get in, you daft git."  
Rimmer lay down stiffly in front of him, letting his body slide smoothly through the covers into the warm pocket of air surrounding Lister. Slowly, so as not to startle, Lister slid his hand through the holo... through Rimmer's chest, and found the light bee. It was so cold it burnt. Gingerly, Lister rubbed it with his fingers until it started to warm. He held it closer and lay back again - and was startled to discover that he was now overlapping Rimmer. If he moved, he could see the faintest edges of disrupted light. He stifled a giggle.  
"What?" asked the testy voice from very near his lips.  
"I just realized - I've never been inside of a bloke before." He grinned. "Am I any good, man?"  
Rimmer paused for a second before answering. "Ashtray... whiskey... lager... a touch of curry... in a bundle of Liverpool-supporting goit."  
Lister giggled again and fell asleep.  
When he awoke, he was alone - but warm.


	2. Remember

Lister leaned back onto the stark medi-cot and closed his eyes to the dim light. Wires dangled from electrodes pasted to either side of his forehead, running to a small black box in the corner of the otherwise blank room. Its soothing humming was the only sound. The Hypno-Regresser was a simple machine, Kryten had assured him - merely an alteration of the Dream Recorder. Lister was rarely inclined to trust the android in matters concerning his own brain, but in this instance - this was a trip he wanted to take, and he didn't want to take half-arsed. No, maybe 'wanted' wasn't the right word - but he wasn't about to use the right one.  
The scenes of Lister's past moved backwards like a vid on rewind. Back to the days when he was still alive. He called a mental pause on the moment when Rimmer first walked in on the mess that was his new bunkmate's natural habitat. Lister slowed the replay as Rimmer's nostrils flared in disgust. Such a simple act, but so orchestrated, when you looked with a view to critique. The eye-crinkle preceded the actual nostril flare. Once the eyes had narrowed sufficiently, it was the sides of the mouth that lead the charge, pushing upwards as the sides of the nose expanded. The whole effect communicated disgust and condescension in equal amounts, in a gesture that Lister was to become very familiar with.  
But that wasn't it.  
Fast-forward - and the scenes spun ahead. He paused briefly at the soul-baring soup moment, but that wasn't it. Too early. Too uncaring. Faster. The ill-fated memory. The bar-room tidy. The fear-suction. Ace... Stop. From this vantage, he was able to take a long, hard (indeed) look at Ace. Style, swagger, élan - no question. Everything Arn didn't have. Ace stood in front of Lister like a Greek god and a kindly mentor, in one luscious lamè package. Undeniably attractive, Ace stood... on a pedestal. Too distant. This wasn't it. Fast-forward.  
The evil... Stop.  
He saw the low Rimmer march down the stairs. Now, unburdened with terror or pain, he took a better look at the situation.  
Whatever Rimmer's subconscious thought, piercings just didn't work on him. Or the feathers. Fast-forward.  
The long sleep... the psirens (Lister took a quick replay of Pete Transet's sister - slavering monster though it was, for that moment, it had looked and, lord yes, felt like Pete Transet's sister). The heat-unit failure... Stop. Lister looked at that night that he warmed Rimmer's light bee. This wasn't it... But it was close. He felt the nearness of the hologram, his barely-presence when he would finally shut up for once. And Lister was intrigued, amused, maybe slightly solicitous. Close. He fast-forwarded more slowly.  
The brown planet they fled to after the heating unit died. Stop. Play normal speed.

Lister and Cat were eager to disembark, and crowded around the airlock. With both of them working at it, it took twice as long to open.  
"Well, you made long work of that, chaps," Rimmer commented testily as he followed them outside. Kryten sniffed and headed to the engine room to start the heating unit's auto-repair system.  
They had landed on what had looked like a well-cooked crepe from above. Up close, it looked like a very large well-cooked crepe. This planet had been arid for a long, long time, Lister guessed. He gratefully shed his gaudy throw and parka, and tossed them back inside the airlock. Cat had already run inside after a quick look out, shed his furs, and emerged in a shining gold thigh-length jacket over a tight black shirt and matching black-and-gold trousers. "How am I lookin'?"  
"Like Liberace's worst nightmare," Rimmer sniffed.  
"Listen, Captain Scarlet of the Dork Brigade..."  
"Ladies!" Lister interrupted. "I hate to intrude, but - Cat, help me set up the shelter out here. Rimmer, man, make yourself useful and look around."  
It was always a tossup as to whether Rimmer would take a reasonable suggestion, but he merely rolled his eyes at Cat and headed over a rise to the north.  
The portable shelter was designed to be easy for a single wounded crewmember to set up, so Lister and Cat were done in a surprisingly short time.  
"Yeeeeeeeees!" exclaimed Cat. "I can finally take a bath!" He started to peel off his jacket.  
A cat-bath was not something Lister really wanted to see at the moment, so he left the shelter and wandered around Starbug's landing area, assessing the status of the vehicle. He concluded, after an hour spent circling the vehicle, that he wouldn't know a sound and dirty ship from one that was ready to shatter if you broke wind too vigorously. However, this inspection did result in him being behind one of the landing legs when Rimmer came back over the ridge.  
He had obviously been running; holo-sweat stuck his hair to his forehead, and he looked winded. He didn't see anyone else outside.  
And his expression was, for the first time that Lister can remember seeing it, completely unguarded. Relief, excitement, mild fatigue - the details were there, but most importantly, arrogance and condescension had taken a holiday.  
And he looked smegging beautiful.  
Pause.  
This was the place. Lister was sure.  
He quickly scrolled through the rest. The immediate return of the arrogant gittishness once Lister stepped into view. The brackish lake Rimmer had found, that nonetheless gave the recyc machinery something fresh to work with. The bender they threw that evening in celebration, with Kryten serving as their designated walker. The resumption of the pursuit of Red Dwarf with some reluctance once the heating unit was fixed. Legion, hard light... Lister stabbed the mental fast-forward savagely.  
The cockpit. Pause.  
Lister looked out over a sea of light bees, forming a glowing ring of breathtaking beauty around the pale pink planet. But... resume. Lister turned to the man sitting beside him. "Are you really gonna be the one who breaks the chain?"  
Rimmer was looking out over the spectacle, awestuck. There was a time when Lister thought this moment was the one in which he fell in love. But no; it was already done. In this moment, seeing that unguarded face, and it _staying_ that way in front of him - displaying wonder, fear, and - he dared think - a bit of hope... well, in this moment, he became a lost man.  
In more ways than one. He looked at that jaw, hard-light now, and imagined running his fingers along it, feeling the soft skin with a hint of stubble pulled over the bone below. He imagined the taste of those lips, how they would give for a moment and then resist if he crushed them under his, nipping until they opened and let him slip his tonge in, devouring, opening Rimmer's mouth farther, a tart fruit ripe for plucking... But not now. In a moment. In just one more moment, when it would be the right one. In one more moment - until there were no more moments left, and there was no more Rimmer on the ship.  
Just a pile of their junk in the cargo hold and a persistent ache in his heart.  
"Why do I have to think of you, man?" he asked the dark room.  
The machine hummed happily in response.  
Lister sighed and turned it off.


	3. Ace up his sleeve

Rimmer ran up the hill, slow and off-balance in the knee-deep snow. Behind him, he heard the yelps and growls coming dangerously close. He turned, took careful aim, and brought down the three closest GELF-dogs with three shots from his laser pistol. The GELF-dogs behind those took the dead dogs in front as an easier meal than the two-legged beast running farther uphill, and made three seething lumps of feast where they had fallen.  
Rimmer continued up the hill to the rock outcropping he had seen from below; sure enough, there was a small cavelike depression in the jagged overhangs. He sat in the shelter and took stock.  
Although he felt hunger and cold, as a hologram, food and warmth were luxuries rather than necessities. Sleep, as well, he could do without in a pinch (although it was still psychologically necessary, if not physically; as part of his post-death orientation, Holly had assured him he would go mad if he went too long without sleep). He had minor injuries, but none affected the integrity of his light-bee. So there was no reason to linger here longer than it took to get his bearings. He opened the com-link disguised as a cufflink on his left wrist.  
"Computer?"  
"Yes?"  
"Can you give my position relative to the nest?"  
"Of course I can. Three fwicks north, around an old abandoned lighthouse, two fwicks east, cave on your right. Even you can't miss it."  
On his first flight with the computer, he had irritably told her what he thought of her in-love, hero-worship attitude. She dropped it with a rapidity that indicated a certain relief. The other Aces, she explained some time later, requested that persona, claiming that it helped them to stay in character. "What sad gits," Rimmer had commented. "Yes, you are," was her reply.  
Her current persona was a bit too close to Holly's for Rimmer's taste, but given the options, he would take it. Unlike Holly, she wasn't in the least bit computer-senile, and accomplished difficult tasks, from ship-piloting to calculations to translations, with enviable ease.  
Rimmer disconnected and followed her directions. The rest was a typical job for Ace. He raided the cave of the mutant man-eating insects that was plaguing the nearby towns, all of which happened to be full of simple, honest folk. He fought his way heroically to the queen, narrowly escaping death, and killed her. He dragged the body down to the aforementioned town of simple and honest folk to show them that they were now safe. He was offered a great deal of money, and turned it down in favor of a hearty meal and a bath. He turned away with a chivalrous kiss the bashful maidens who interrupted his sleep to offer sexual favors ranging from the demure to the truly perverted. He left early in the morning, before a parade could be arranged.  
And, as he has been doing more and more frequently as time goes on, he wondered what the hell happened to him.  
Every Rimmer directive was right out of the window. He cannot imagine how the second technician he used to be ever could have pulled off the feats he now considered routine. Even if he overlooked his new habit of risking his life for what is right and good, he's baffled by how he constantly rejects the praise and money that people attempt to throw at him. And, dear god, the sexual favors that women attempt to throw at him.  
They are not throwing themselves at Arnold Judas Rimmer, though. They are throwing themselves at Ace. And he feels that difference keenly, and keeps them at arms' length.  
He might have traded "Sad git" in on "Whatta guy!" but he was still living on a borrowed identity, still a slave to the assumptions of others. Ace had been bestowed upon him, and he had no choice but to be Ace, to be handsome, brave, and charming. But that did not change who he was, and he knew that to attempt to show the girls who looked at him with adoring and lustful eyes his telegraph pole photo collection, or to regale them with stories of his stint as the treasurer of the Hammond Organ Appreciation Society, would be to see their admiration turn briefly to confusion, then to boredom and disgust. To be Ace, he had to keep Arn under wraps.  
One of the first lessons Rimmer had learned since becoming Ace is the difference between sex and intimacy. And, he is startled to discover, the former is highly overrated. The latter, for as long as he is Ace, is not an option for him.  
He sat in the cockpit and drew a deep breath. "Off to the next place of trouble, old girl?"  
"You can drop the accent, Arn."  
He sighed. "Off to the next sodding backwoods, lickety-split." The ship rose smoothly into the air, took a slow slingshot off of the planet's gravity until it was clear of the atmosphere, and then rocketed away. She was good.  
"Time for a break. You're tense. Your 348th incarnation liked a bar in the 49th dimension - it's only a quick hop away."  
Rimmer looked out of the cockpit at the sea of stars all around him. It was a view that he once found cold and lonely, but now finds comforting. The stars, as long-lived as he; unjudgemental, shedding their scintillating light with equal beauty on Ace or on Arn. Adrift in an empty sea. "I think I'd like to stay in space for a while." He tapped her console thoughtfully. "You're the only one who can take me without the Ace."  
"Suit yourself."  
But he recognized it as a lie as soon as it escaped his lips. There was a ship out there with someone who had come to accept him as Arn, telegraph poles, Hammond Organs, abject cowardice and all. True, there were any number of Listers in the dimensions he sailed, but he avoided them with all of the fervor he used to bring to avoiding danger. He had no desire to see a creature with Lister's body who did not know him, brown eyes and ridiculous ponytails with a mind behind that lacked the intimate knowledge of him that Lister, _his_ Lister, had. Dave had seen Rimmer's subconscious, had suffered for his cowardice, and had even undergone Rimmer's abuse of his own body when they swapped. And he had still wrapped a warm hand around Rimmer's light-bee, holding it close to his chest out of kindness. The entirety that was Arnold Judas Rimmer did not disgust him, and Rimmer does not know if Dave is aware of the magnitude of that. When Lister bade Rimmer farewell, his face betrayed actual sadness at Rimmer's departure, as if he wished Arn could stay.  
And that moment trapped him, as well. He had been so eager, for all of those years that he was stuck on Red Dwarf and, later, Starbug, to escape. There was nothing for him there, he was sure, only ridicule and the dubious company of a ragtag trio of unprofessional gits. The days, months, years of traded abuse and hopeless longing for something _else_ wore away at him, fraying the edges of his psyche to the point of unraveling. Then, when he finally had everything he had been desiring for so long – a body of his own, respect, courage, a future of adventuring as his lauded Aceness – he looked back on his way out of the door, and saw what he had been ignoring for so long. His desire for what might be had blinded him to what he had; the simple sweetness of complete acceptance.  
Rimmer had _that_ dimension programmed into his computer with the keyword, "Home." It was one he would never use, though. If he returned, what did he expect to happen? If he came back to Starbug, ripped off the wig, and told Dave how much he missed him – what, would Dave cry out his love, melt in Rimmer's arms, and kiss him more sweetly and passionately than the endless stream of hero-worshipping girls, for knowing him far more completely than they ever could?  
No, he would curse him for a yellow goit who couldn't follow through on his commitments. Rimmer couldn't face letting him down. He had never succeeded in anything in his life; he had to succeed at this.  
For Dave.


End file.
